This post will discuss about semantic ambiguity and its unique functions in political conflicts. There are many words that contain multiple meanings. In a sentence, the meaning of such ambiguous words depends on the context which consist of the source, the topic, and the recipient(s). Two source of semantic ambiguity are identified: homophones and loose-meaning. Homophone is a phenomenon where a word has two or more discreet meanings. The homophones in Standard Mandarin is used by the Chinese citizens to send ambiguous message that may or may not offend the Chinese government depending on its interpretation. In this case, the interpretation depends on the selection of a set of homo-phonic words. The loose-meaning, in contrast, is a phenomenon where a word is loosely defined and can refer to a range of related concepts.
The Capitalists are reported to use this loose-meaning phenomenon to attach certain attitude toward certain concept, object, or people. In the early months of 2016, a Capitalist failed to use reasoning to criticize auxlang in a few Facebook groups even when he uses the hacked account of an influential auxlanger for credibility. Unable to accept failure, he labels his anti-auxlang criticism as ‘truth’ and label pro-auxlang support as ‘political’ and ‘conspiracy theories’ to ‘win’ in the debate. He later uses more ambiguous labels like ‘rude’, ‘trolls’, ‘off-topic’, and ‘against the rule’ as more magic words to stigmatize any posts that expose the hacking. That Capitalist, by himself, do not have the authority nor the credibility to decide how such labels should be applied. He cannot provide any reasoning to use those labels. He cannot even gain support from other people except for his few close political allies since very few conlangers participate in the auxlang debate (although they tolerated the debate). He evades this issues by hacking into many conlangers’ accounts to gain the authority, credibility, and consensus to override reasoning and decide how such labels should be used.
The authority is gain from the hacked moderator accounts of the groups in question. The hacker use their illegal authority in an abusive fashion to demonstrate his power over social norms and discourage opposition; he tells everyone to stop making political posts and then contradict himself by posting political trolls. He uses several non-moderator accounts to further support the authority of the hacked moderator accounts. The credibility is gained from the accounts of influential conlangers including one founder of the 'Linguistics and Conlangs' Facebook group. The hacker constantly loses credibility in his hacked account due to his irrationality so he often uses a new hacked account for each criticism. He gains consensus by using his hacked accounts to direct all his attacks toward Victor Chan who provide the most reasoning against his anti-auxlang criticism. He isolates Victor by hacking into the accounts of anyone who: 1) is going to engage in friendly conversation with Victor, 2) had engaged in friendly conversation with Victor, 3) or help Victor support auxlang.
This use of loosely-defined negative words for stigmatization by the Capitalists is not unique to this case; the Capitalists are reported to use this tactics in other online communities. The Capitalists use the 'Communist' and 'lazy' in their own accounts, 'Stalinist' on hacked Marxist accounts, 'Capitalist' on hacked Communist accounts, 'racist' on hacked black activist account, 'sexist' on hacked feminist account, 'homophobic' on LGBTQ account, and 'political' on other non-politician accounts.